Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to decision-making support when decision making including a plurality of selective elements is performed by a plurality of participants.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, research and development of techniques for performing various types of interventions such as making proposals and providing support from computers to humans are underway.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2007-212532 discloses a technique for extracting contents or a feature of an utterance in a conversation to make an assessment of the utterance. With the technique according to Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2007-212532, for example, a conversation between a customer and an operator at a call center is analyzed in order to assess customer handling skills of the operator including wording used by the operator, customer satisfaction, and whether or not any trouble has occurred.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2011-248549 discloses a dialogue device which engages in a dialogue with a user to support decision making by the user. The dialogue device according to Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2011-248549 appropriately supports decision making by a user by dynamically changing information related to knowledge and preferences of the user in accordance with a progress in a dialogue with the user.
While Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2011-248549 describes providing a single user with decision-making support, support for decision making is desirably provided even when a plurality of users exchange opinions in a conversation to make a decision. Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2007-212532 is also intended to assess satisfaction and the like of a single speaker and is not intended to analyze and assess satisfaction of a group as a whole. Decision making by a group is desirably performed without impairing, to the greatest extent feasible, satisfaction of the group as a whole.
In some cases, decision making involves a plurality of selective elements. For example, decision making with respect to a place to eat while traveling includes two selective elements: “where” and “what” to eat. Although satisfaction of an entire group increases when decision making is performed as a consensus of the group, a conflict in opinions often occurs. In particular, a conflict in opinions often occurs when there are a plurality of selective elements.
During decision making, when there is a participant who has not yet expressed an opinion regarding a given selective element, better decision making can be achieved by eliciting an opinion from this participant. When there are a plurality of participants who have yet expressed opinions, there is a problem of which participant an opinion is to be elicited from. While opinions are ideally elicited from all of the participants, since there is no guarantee that opinions can be elicited from all participants due to a time constraint or the like, opinions are desirably preferentially elicited from participants who are highly likely to contribute towards improving group satisfaction. There is also a problem that a person in a vulnerable position in a group is unable to express an opinion or that, even if an opinion is expressed, the opinion is not presented in such a manner that the opinion is adopted.
Moreover, the problems described above are not limited to a conversation agent and apply in general to decision making support devices which support decision making including a plurality of selective elements.